Question

I’m trying to do a simple insert into a postgres table, but am getting an error that the value I’m trying to insert is being interpreted as a column name

INSERT INTO "imageTagBusinessMainCategory"
(id, businessMainCategory)
VALUES
(DEFAULT, "auto dealer")

Where id is set up to be the primary key, and auto increment, and not null. Those are the boxes I ticked when I set up the table in phpPgAdmin.

I’m getting this error though:

ERROR: ERROR: column "auto dealer" does not exist
Query = INSERT
INTO "imageTagBusinessMainCategory"
(id, businessMainCategory)
VALUES
(DEFAULT,
"auto dealer")

I’ve put my table name in double quotes, as I’ve read here I should.

And used DEFAULT to auto-increment the id as I’ve read here I should.

Any ideas?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Use 'auto dealer' instead. PostgreSQL interprets " as being quotes for identifiers, ' as being quotes for strings.

Also:

• If this is a new project, just don’t use mixed case tables; it is a
  source of frustration later. Instead of being able to use any case in
  your SQL statements, you must both quote the identifier name and get
  the case correct.

• There is no need to specify id/DEFAULT, you’re
  asking it to do what it would have done already. I haven’t met a DBMS
  that requires you to include columnName/DEFAULT if you want it to
  put the default value in the column, so I don’t think this extra KV
  pair is going to make what is happening clearer to anyone reading
  your code later.